Going Underground: Birmingham

Thanks to Robert Deloyde roving around with his camera, I am able to add more to the information contained in the book. I am indebted to Robert for the information.

Near to the corner of Hill St and Station St was a Gentlemen's Toilet, it was just below the roadway, at some point it was closed down and filled in, when New St Station had a refurb, guess what was uncovered?

Robert was surprised I did not mention the Bus/Coach station that was built but never used under Birmingham's former Central Library.

Robert also pointed me in the direction of the service area of the Big Top, (entrance is opposite Moor St Station). This not built with articulated lorry's in mind in the 1950s, with the exit in New St. Never built because of the cost.

Woolworths in New St had it own service area in Stephenson Street. A loading bay had spaces for the managers cars, the area dark and dingy. Possibly you can still see the slope to the loading bay from Stephenson Street next door to two large lifts still visible in Stephenson Street that go down one floor to an underground car park with room for about twenty cars.

When Rackhams was a going concern at the top of the slope there was a turntable so that you could drive onto the turntable and push the van/lorry around so that you could back onto a loading bay, but what used to happen was that van/lorry's would hit the turntable at speed causing it to turn around until the driver would reverse to the loading bay, thereby stopping the rotation. This turntable lifted many years ago when the vehicles grew too big.

In the book I spoke of working in Digbeth and the problems when the River Rea flooded. Just before the Ironmonger's closed for the last time (Gregory Pank's) after trading for some five decades - Robert took a few shots inside the shop, and with their permission I took a few in their cellar. Full of stuff, including boxes, a table and, in one corner, a pump used to empty the cellar when the river flooded it. Previously this had been a baker and also a pub. The only light into the cellar from a number of glass panes in the ceiling.

Tramways still have some rails in situ, never having been raised.

When work started of HS2 in Curzon Street, on removing the concrete and soil, now covered over, this brick work was revealed and Robert wonders if it belonged to the earlier railway buildings.

Ground Idioms

Several words have become part of the language in being used in phrases. Last time we looked at ‘moon’ and now look at ‘ground’.

To stand one’s ground is first recorded in 1707.

To ground in an electrical sense is first seen in 1870 and used in connection with telegraphy.

Grounds in the sense of ‘reason, motive’ is first seen around the end of the 11th century.

Grounds in the sense of ‘source, origin, cause’ is recorded since the end of the 14th century.

To run to ground is a fox hunting term first seen in print in 1719.

Nobody issued any ground rules before 1890, but then it referred specifically to rules laid down for a game or contest on a playing field. Not until 1953 had it been used in the more general sense.

To put on the ground in a figurative sense is first seen in the late 14th century when referring to such as a sermon or argument.

Nobody ran a ship to ground before the middle of the 15th century.

To ground, now most often something done to teenagers, first came to be used to refer to the denial of privileges in the Second World War and specifically to pilots.

Ground as in the past tense of the verb ‘to grind’ first appears in print in 1765.

Grounded, as in instruction through the basics, appears as early as 1540.

Grounds are found as a sediment in the bottom of a liquid, we often hear of coffee grounds, appears for the first time in the middle of the 14th century, well before coffee was drunk in Europe.

Grounds, as in an enclosed parcel of land, is recorded from the middle of the 15th century.

Groundhog, he who had a rather repetitive day in a film of that name, is also known as the American marmot and has been known as a groundhog since 1784.

Groundswell is an odd word, for it refers to a broad and/or deep swell of the sea and features no land at all. First seen in 1783, the figurative sense of ‘groundswell of opinion’ appears from 1817.

Ground floor will not have been popular until an upper floor became more common, hence unknown before 1600; while the figurative sense is not seen until 1864.

Ground breaking has had three distinctive phases beginning with the first sod being dug around 1650; next came the ceremonial planting or digging in 1884; and as an adjective in 1907.

Ground zero is first heard in 1946, a reference to the atomic blasts of that era.

Background appears in the 1750s to refer to that which is to the rear of the main focus of an image, earlier to that it was used, from the 1670s, in a more general sense; and in the figurative sense from 1854.

Groundless, as in ‘having no basis in fact’, is not recorded before the 1620s.

Groundling is first seen in 1620 when referring to a person attending a theatre in the pit where there was neither floor or benches (thus on the bare earth); and later came to refer to anything of bad or unsophisticated taste.

Underground originally meant ‘below the surface’; it came to mean ‘secretive’ by the 1630s; it acquired the meaning of ‘subculture’ in 1953, taken directly from those working against Nazi occupation; and the railway sense is first seen in 1887, although the mode of transport had been in use since 1834 when it was referred to as ‘underground railway’.

Groundwater, in the modern sense of a water source extracted from below ground, is only seen since 1890. Prior to that, and at least from the middle of the 15th century, groundwater was that found at the bottom of a stream.

Fairgrounds have been known since 1741.

Overground would be supposed to have appeared as the same time as ‘underground’, yet surprisingly the term does not appear in print until 1879. (I wonder where the Wombles wombled free before underground and underground were first coined?)

No vessel was to have run aground until around 1500.

Playgrounds were unknown until 1780 and initially only used to refer to the recreational area associated with a school.

Foreground is first seen in an artistic sense in the 1690s when Dryden wrote Art of Painting; the figurative sense is not seen until 1816.

Rather predictably ‘groundwork’ was first used to refer to building foundations, seen from the middle of the 15th century; the more general sense is first seen from the 1550s.